Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Naruto series, nor do I intend to make any profit from this.

"You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Nothing pleased him more than to watch them together. So alike- fair of skin and dark of hair, sweet tempered, quiet, and kind. But where did the similarities end? Would she grow confident of her personality and gain the same understated self-possession? What would it mean if she were weak?

Weak spirited? Weak bodied?

Weak-hearted? Like her mother?

The strain of a second child on that heart had proved its undoing. The doctors had warned her. The Elders had warned her. He had pleaded as much as his pride would allow. But true to her hidden strength- that power wrapped in silk and hidden behind a gentle smile- his wife was determined to give her daughter the joy of a sibling, Branch House be damned. And so he soon had two daughters, both of who took after their mother. Beautiful and elegant. But only one remembered her- her smiles and sweet perfume- and for the life of him, he couldn't understand why she also had to act liker her.

The shyness, the nervousness, and the genuine kind-heartedness so unfamiliar in their harsh world. He didn't think that she understood how she scared him. She needed to be strong, and she needed to develop on her own. Because if he looked at her too long, all he could see was her mother. Who wasn't a shinobi of Konoha and who didn't die on the battlefield, but was struck down too early nonetheless. He pushed her harder than her sister, who seemed more like himself- with the drive to excel developing early- and in a different direction. She needed to find her own power, outside the safety net of the clan.

No one fully grasped his methods, but it remained a fact that the Hyuga had no need of a weak heir.

It wasn't until he was kneeling beside her makeshift cot, in the area designated as a temporary hospital after the devastation of Pain's attack, that he understood that Hinata was more like her mother than he could have supposed. The same reckless disregard for her own health and the same hidden stubbornness had brought her to this point; near death, but alive. Not healthy, but alive and healing.

He hoped she was sleeping when he whispered, "You fought well."

A/N: I've always struggled to reconcile how I feel about Hiashi and Hinata's parent/child relationship in canon with what I think it should be. So this is an attempt to explain things from Hiashi's perspective.